supporting their aged and infirm parents, tortured by the rheumatic and neuralgic pains which a malarious country often produces in old age. And hither, in greater number than all the rest, were the multitude, drawn by curiosity to see a new Rabbi, and witness for themselves the wonderful works, the account of which they had heard, but only half believed; so that, as Peter looked upon the crowd that filled the narrow street and blocked up the entrance to his house, it seemed to him as though the whole city were literally gathered at the door.*

Of them all none went disappointed away. On some Christ laid his hands; to some he spoke the word of healing. The lame threw away their crutches; the blind looked for the first time on the picture which the setting sun was painting in the west; the trembling hand was steadied, the withered limb made strong; they that were brought upon their beds bore them rejoicingly away; the burning heats of fever were extinguished; parched and fevered lips, moistened with the returning pulsations of healthy blood, spoke his praise; mothers clasped to their bosoms the children who returned to them from the very door of death; minds long darkened by disease felt the strange illumination of truth as the mystic clouds that obscured the past broke and scattered at his word; and slaves, long oppressed under the intolerable dominion of appetites and passions, clothed with demoniacal strength by devilish inspiration, burst the old fetters, and became again free men. Nor was it till the sun had sunk below the hills that environ the plain of Gennesaret, and the ruddy glow of the evening clouds was no longer reflected in the placid lake, that gradually the crowd dispersed, and left Jesus to a brief repose.

But not to sleep. Simple as seemed to be his remedies,

* Mark i., 33. There is reason to suppose that the Gospel of Mark was written largely under the influence and direction of Peter.-See Davidson's Introduc. to the New Test., vol. i., p. 138, and post; Alford's New Test., proleg., iii., § 2. + Compare Luke iv., 40, with Matt. viii., 16.

they were self-exhausting. At every touch he felt virtue go out of him.* At every word of strong, mastering rebuke of evil spirits, he felt the struggle with the powers of darkness. The sight of so much distress moved him too with compassion. The deeper insight into that spiritual disease and death, of which this was but the type, intensified his feeling. His sensitive heart throbbed in sympathy with every disease he cured, with every pang which he alleviated. The effect upon his frame was so apparent, that to his disciples it almost seemed as though he had taken upon himself the diseases he had taken from others, and they instinctively applied to him the words of the ancient prophet, "Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses." This nervous exhaustion was too great for sleep, and, leaving at length the now slumbering city, he sought in the quiet repose which characterizes nature at night, and in silent communion with his God, that rest which every devout and poetic nature can at least partially comprehend, and which no other can.

Nazareth had expelled him from her borders; Capernaum besought him to remain. In the morning, Simeon, always a man of action rather than of devotion, found him in his retreat, and brought him the message that the people sought for him. Jesus, however, came not to heal, but to preach. He could not suffer his sympathies to deflect him from his mission; other cities needed his word no less. His ministry was to be an itinerant ministry, that no one place might claim him as its own. He commenced, therefore, his first missionary circuit among the cities of Galilee. Every where he preached the same gospel of repentance; every where his word was with power no less upon the body than upon the soul. One of the cures wrought on this circuit added still farther to his widening reputation.§

* Mark v., 30; Luke vi., 19; viii., 46. + Matt. viii., 17; Isa. liii., 4.

Matt. iv., 23-25; Mark i., 36–39.

§ There is some doubt whether this cure was wrought at this time, or after the Sermon on the Mount. We follow Robinson's Harmony in placing it here.

In the absence of accurate observations, the one term leprosy was used among the Hebrews to designate various cutaneous disorders widely different in inherent character, but possessing some similarity in symptoms and external appearance.* In its worst forms, leprosy is alike awful in its character and hideous in its appearance. For years it lurks concealed in the interior organs. Gradually it develops itself. Spots of red appear upon the skin, chiefly the face; the hair of the brows, and lids, and beard begins to fall off; the eyes become fierce and staring; the voice grows hoarse and husky, and is finally quite lost; the joints grow quite stiff, refuse to fulfill their office, and drop off one by one; the eyes are eaten from their sockets. The patient, strangely insensible to his awful condition, suffers an apathy of mind that is scarcely less dreadful than the condition of his body. Corruption horribly precedes the grave, until at length the wretched victim. of this most horrible disorder of any time or any country, "a handless, eyeless, tongueless wreck of humanity," finds his only refuge in the welcome tomb.

Universally regarded as suffering a disease as virulent in its contagiong as in its immediate effects, the leper was shunned

* For a tabular statement of the disorders probably included under this general and popular name, see Copeland's Medical Dict., art. Psoriasis, § 7, note. Compare art. Leprosy, § 16, 17.

+ Thomson's Land and Book, vol. i., p. 520. For a striking picture of the growth of leprosy, accurate as well as striking, see "The Leper," Willis's Sacred Poems, p. 21.

For a full description of the leprosy in its various forms, or rather of the various diseases which share that name, see Smith's Bible Dict., art. Leper; art. Medicine, p. 302, b. ; Jahn's Archæology, p. 209, § 189; Thomson's Land and Book, vol. ii., p. 518; Alford's Greek Test., Matt. viii., 4; Copeland's Med. Dict., arts. Psoriasis, Leprosy, and Ptyriasis. For the Mosaic description, see Leviticus xiii.

§ Whether leprosy is contagious or not has greatly perplexed both the divines and the physicians. Alford (Gr. Test., Matt. viii., 2) and Trench (On the Miracles, p. 174) deny that it is, and point to the cases of Naaman (2 Kings v.) and Gehazi (2 Kings viii., 4, 5) as evidence that it was never so regarded. The leper, they think, was simply ceremonially unclean. But that leprosy is now universally regarded by the people of the East as contagious, see Thomson's Land and Book, p. 517-519. The truth seems to be, that the milder